Living with a Chronic Disease

Living With a Chronic Disease

Diabetes is a disease caused by the body's inability to produce insulin, causing high blood glucose. Insulin converts sugars, starches and other foods into energy.

There are two types of diabetes: diabetes type 1 and diabetes type 2. Diabetes type 2 is produced when the human body does not produce any insulin due to the immune system attacks the cells in charge of producing this hormone. Generally, diabetes type 1 affects children and young people.

Diabetes type 2 is diagnosed when the patient's body does not produce enough insulin for fat, muscle and liver cells use. Diabetes type 2 can be very harmful if it is not treated properly. One hundred fifty million people around the world suffer from type 2 Diabetes today. Medical experts consider this type 2 Diabetes to be a "global epidemic."

Excess foods, and poor consuming habits, are the main reasons why diabetes is such a problem. Many people are ingesting more food than what the body needs. When people don't exercise to burn the excess of energy that the body stores, people become fat and are prone to type 2 Diabetes.

Researchers understand that diabetes can be caused for a combination of factors such as genetic, cultural and human being lifestyle. However, eating habits and exercise can help reduce the risk of getting diabetes by maintaining a balanced diet reducing fats and carbohydrates, and controlling the amount of food intake, and increasing physical activity to burn the excess of sugars. A change in the lifestyle can avoid a human being to suffer a serious chronic disease such as diabetes.

A person diagnosed with diabetes needs to adjust his lifestyle to manage treatment to fight the disease and to prevent harming the pancreas. There are two types of treatment for both forms of diabetes. Taking prescribed medication for type 1 diabetes is needed to control the disease. A person with Diabetes type 1 needs to receive a dose of insulin every day through injections to keep up his blood glucose level up. Type 2 diabetes treatments differ in that the patient does not need a daily injection of insulin. In this type of diabetes providers ask the patient to change their lifestyle by reducing their fat and carbohydrate intake, as well as increasing more vegetables and fruits to the diet.

Being physically active through exercise is very helpful because it helps to keep the patient healthy. Additionally, exercise and a healthy diet is also required for Diabetes type 1.

A change in the lifestyle can prevent an individual to suffer a serious chronic disease such as diabetes, and it makes the difference in diabetics most of the time.

Living with a chronic disease such as diabetes can cause a challenge for a person, because the illness is like having a second full-time job. Diabetes patients experiment